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Prioritize Targets w/o Focus Fire?

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Prioritize Targets w/o Focus Fire?

How do I prioritize targets without getting smacked down by Shield Mitigation?

from Sins Forums
I've been trying to figure out how best to marshal my forces in the Battles That Matter--i.e. the battles where some degree of micromanagement might be crucial. Most recently, I've been trying to focus-fire on capships, or target the enemy's LRMs to seriously cut down on the enemy fleet's damage potential.

I understand, however, that shield mitigation is designed to minimize the effectiveness of focus firing. So it may be counter-productive, for example, to tell my entire fleet to target one LRM at a time.

But what about the following?

I have 10 . . . I dunno. Let's say "Flak Frigates." Or fighter squadrons.
My opponent has 10 LRMs.
I've enabled stacking in my empire tree, so both my force and my opponent's force take up one icon each.

I click my "10 Flak Frigates" icon on the empire tree, and right-click on my opponent's "10 LRM" icon. Do my 10 flak frigates split their fire among the closest available LRMs? Or do all 10 flak frigates focus-fire one of the LRMs, and then do something else when it eventually dies?

If the latter, can someone suggest an alternate way to quickly get large chunks of my force to selectively attack a subset of the enemy fleet; say, "All his LRMs"?

33,359 views 80 replies
Reply #26 from Sins Forums Top
Ah, I'm glad I wasn't talking crazy before about how shield mitigation doesn't really work as intended by the dev's. It's nice to be validated.
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Unless I've missed something, I'm afraid I'm not convinced that you have been.

I've yet to see a solid mathematical proof, or a convincing in-game replay demonstrating that focus fire is the best way to go, and mitigation doesn't make any difference to that.

On the other hand, I have little doubt that the devs will have spent a lot of time running the numbers, as well as testing in-game, to make sure that mitigation is working the way they intend it.
Reply #27 from Sins Forums Top
The way the system is set up, it is not against focus firing though. A single ship can sometimes put an enemy ship to max mitigation. If you outnumber the enemy, he will get bonus mitigation and you might end up doing about the same damage to second as a fleet to him as you would with only a 1 to 1 ratio, because the 2 to 1 pushes his mitigation much higher. You essentially gain very little from having a fleet that is twice as large.

In some cases (i.e. teched out advent), or with repair vessels, you can actually get to a point where your 10 would have drawn against his 10, but when you send in 15, you actually lose the battle (all 15 of your ships die). I don't know about you, but I prefer when the side with a more powerful force has the advantage. Being able to add 5 ships to one of your fleets and turn their victory or draw into a defeat seems horribly counter-intuitive.
Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #28 from Sins Forums Top
The way the system is set up, it is not against focus firing though. A single ship can sometimes put an enemy ship to max mitigation. If you outnumber the enemy, he will get bonus mitigation and you might end up doing about the same damage to second as a fleet to him as you would with only a 1 to 1 ratio, because the 2 to 1 pushes his mitigation much higher. You essentially gain very little from having a fleet that is twice as large. In some cases (i.e. teched out advent), or with repair vessels, you can actually get to a point where your 10 would have drawn against his 10, but when you send in 15, you actually lose the battle (all 15 of your ships die). I don't know about you, but I prefer when the side with a more powerful force has the advantage. Being able to add 5 ships to one of your fleets and turn their victory or draw into a defeat seems horribly counter-intuitive.
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It is very entertaining that you were able to draw that conclusion from the fact presented in this thread. This is an excellent example having a predetermined conclusion and then interpreting facts to fit.

Mitigation doesn't care if the 250 points come from 1 unit or 10 units, thus focus fire does nothing to influence mitigation.

Reply #29 from Sins Forums Top
Focusing group (let's call them FG) will be doing 50dmg/s, upping shield mitigation significantly. It's simple series - when you sum it you fill find, that you need: 16 seconds to cap mitigation doing ~545 damage during that time.
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I'm checking your numbers, and they look good. When you factor in the base shield mitigation of 15%, each ship in SG hits its 60% mitigation cap after only 12 seconds of focused fire, and after it has taken 476 damage.

. . . but I have a question that turns this entire issue around. Does shield mitigation increase based on the raw damage (i.e. 50), or the damage that actually hits the ship (affected by shield mitigation?)

In the latter case, my calculations are suggesting that with the shield mitigation increasing more slowly (due to less damage getting through each second), it takes 28 seconds of focus fire to reach the 60% cap, and in that time FG will have done 807 damage to the target ship.

Can anyone check my numbers on that?
Reply #30 from Sins Forums Top
It is very entertaining that you were able to draw that conclusion from the fact presented in this thread. This is an excellent example having a predetermined conclusion and then interpreting facts to fit.

Mitigation doesn't care if the 250 points come from 1 unit or 10 units, thus focus fire does nothing to influence mitigation.
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I'm not entirely what what point you're trying to make, you agree with me and disagree at the same time.
Reply #31 from Sins Forums Top
Can anyone check my numbers on that?
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I'm on it. (I wish this game had an easier way to test though)
Reply #32 from Sins Forums Top
basically put, just hit the weaker ships with caps and cruisers. Frigates don't have a chance versus a mid level capital ship.5 or 6 of them can easily be taken out. Adding you own just add to it. Sheild mitigation really does not do anything in the face of superior firepower.
Reply #33 from Sins Forums Top
I'm checking your numbers, and they look good. When you factor in the base shield mitigation of 15%, each ship in SG hits its 60% mitigation cap after only 12 seconds of focused fire, and after it has taken 476 damage.
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ARGH! Make that 386 damage after 12 seconds. Sorry, Excel formula booch.
Reply #34 from Sins Forums Top
but I have a question that turns this entire issue around. Does shield mitigation increase based on the raw damage (i.e. 50), or the damage that actually hits the ship (affected by shield mitigation?)
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It does not seem to be affected at all by any currently existing shield mitigation, as far as I can tell, all the way up to the cap, it was increasing at the same rate per shot.
Reply #35 from Sins Forums Top
Mitigation doesn't care if the 250 points come from 1 unit or 10 units, thus focus fire does nothing to influence mitigation.
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Yes it does, because we're looking at damage per second, not just damage done overall.

shieldData
shieldAbsorbGrowthPerDamage 0.001
shieldAbsorbDecayRate 0.0125
shieldAbsorbBaseMin 0.15
shieldColor ff8FD81D

Assuming that 'shieldAbsorbDecayRate' is per second, that means if you do less than 12.5 damage per second, the mitigation will fall. If you do more than 12.5 damage per second, the mitigation will rise.

Focus firing massively increases the DPS you do against a ship, and thus maximises mitigation almost immediately.

Splitting fire, on the other hand, causes mitigation to rise much more slowly, or not at all, depending on the DPS of the ships involved.



Reply #36 from Sins Forums Top
The problem with sheild mitigation is that without focus fire the effect is that the enemies sheilds have more time to recharge essentially meaning that it takes longer to kill an enemy ship firing one on one.
Reply #37 from Sins Forums Top
It does not seem to be affected at all by any currently existing shield mitigation, as far as I can tell, all the way up to the cap, it was increasing at the same rate per shot.
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Fair enough.

Aside from the fact that mysoltyspl's calculations ignored the effects of hull/shield regeneration, I agree with his conclusions; the SG group destroys the FG group after losing only two ships; a third is nearly killed. If people want me to infodump my numbers I can do so.

. . . does anyone have any numbers on hull/shield regeneration? Does it depend on the ship / faction, or are there hard-coded values like the growth/decay values for shield regeneration? About what magnitude of hit-point change are we talking about?
Reply #38 from Sins Forums Top
A ship with approx 1600 hp has 2 points of shield regen and 1.5 points of hull regen (kodiak crusier), so a fair amount is about 2.75 points of hull regen for this ship.

Spread Group: 12.5 dps * .85 mitigation = 10.6 effective dps. 10.6 dps - 2.75 regen = 7.9 effective dps.

As for the focus group, 12.5 dps * 4 units * .48 (a guess at an average mitigation-- 52%) = 24 dps. 24 - 2.75 = 21.25.

Using those numbers I find the focus fire group to win, even though this test is biased towards the spread fire a fair amount.

This would be sooooo much easier if you could fire at your own ships...
Reply #39 from Sins Forums Top
Using those numbers I find the focus fire group to win, even though this test is biased towards the spread fire a fair amount.
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Durikkan, I think you're right. I adjusted my spreadsheet to assume that each ship heals 2.75 HPs a second (is that what you meant by 2.75 of hull regen?) when actively attacked; this adds about a dozen seconds to the life of the ship being focus-fired, which in turn gives the entire SG fleet more time doing damage. Even so, when every FG ship is healing 2.75 HPs a second, they benefit from health regen a lot more than the SG ships do.

. . . the end result is that all four SG ships die, leaving the FG ships at 1/4 health.

Interestingly enough, before adding health regen, when I generalized my calculations for more than 4 ships (8, 10, 16), the SG group always won with only 2 ships remaining. Now, after adding in health regen as a factor, the presence of more ships in the battle just means that the FG ships each survive with a greater percentage of their original health.

I'm curious to see how tweaking the other inputs affects this mock battle: the health and DPS of each ship, the expected health regen, the shield mitigation cap. DPS is the trickiest because the model breaks down when each ship does more than 12.5 DPS--you'd have to start factoring in more than the base 15% shield mitigation when calculating the damage output of the SG fleet.

Are there other factors that affect health and damage that we're not considering? Because right now I'd have to agree that focus-firing, at least on paper, looks like a good idea.
Reply #40 from Sins Forums Top
OK people. Mitigation problem is very interesting and is splitting fans on half thats why I create small application to check who has right. Nothing fancy :)

Test application (call it little battle simulator) do a math for us.

There are two groups of ships:
Attackers, which use Focus Fire tactic.
Defenders, which use Spread Fire tactic.

You can setup a few parameters like amount of ships in each of group, hull, hull regeneration and dps. There is no shield but this is not so important. For purpose of test I simply add hull and shield together also regeneration of hull and shield as well (but only if regen of hull and shield is the same). Default parameters are set for Cobalt Frigate.

Mitigation value range is from 15% to 60%.
Mitigation growth per damage is 0.1%.
Mitigation decay per second is 1.25%.

Little Battle Simulator

RESULT.

Because I was fan of Focus Fire tactic I'm shocked. I checked application calculations 4 or 5 times and seems its all fine.

In case of similar size groups the best tactic is...

SPREAD FIRE.

Check Yourself :)


Reply #41 from Sins Forums Top
I checked application calculations 4 or 5 times and seems its all fine.In case of similar size groups the best tactic is...SPREAD FIRE.Check Yourself
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Brilliant work, Alacer!

To check your results against my much-less-sexy Excel spreadsheet, I set your program to 4 ships v 4 ships, 1600 health, 2.75 damage regen. All the numbers checked out completely, up to the moment the first SG ship was destroyed; to the second, with the same amount of health remaining on all the FG ships.

. . . at which point, looking at the rest of your spreadsheet, I realize why the model I've been using is flawed: rather than wear away evenly at the health of the FG ships, the SG ships are now only attacking 3 of the FG ships! So their damage output is split 3 ways, not 4.

So, eventually, shortly after the second SG dies, the first two FG die; then it's 2v2 . . . then 2v1 . . . then eventually 2v0. SG wins.

. . . now, FG still wins in a 16v16 match @ 1600 health and 2.75 damage regen; but if players are attacking each other with nothing but heavy cruiser spam, something very weird is happening. :)
Reply #42 from Sins Forums Top
Well, I play with my toy ;) a little and I see a very simple pattern.

In case of Cobalts.

If size of each group is below 7 then Defenders wins.
If size of each group is 7 or greater then Attackers wins.

It seems that in each particular fight there is a turn point where better is use Focus Fire then Spread Fire or more simply: If You have a huge army then don't waste time on Spread Fire because Focus Fire is better in this case anyway.
Reply #43 from Sins Forums Top
You'll get better returns using appropriate types against appropriate enemies because their effective dps will be so much better. So the best way will be to have all your units of a particular type focus fire on the enemy unit they are most effective against.
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Not disputing that targetting appropriate armor types DOES make a difference. However, this does nothing to change the fact that focus fire is still the way to go here.


It does change - don't forget it decreases itself 0.0125/s.
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Makes no difference: Even one-on-one, shooting at a crappy frigate, will max out shield mitigation on it well before it dies. If you're dealing so little damage that the extremely slow decay even has an effect, natural regeneration is going to overcome the puny excuse for damage you're doing anyway.

I actually ran a test of this. 8v8, L1 Kols, no fighters, Team A engaging one-on-one, B engaging by focus fire. Result: 8-0 for focus fire, although team B almost lost a ship. The equation gets even more lopsided if you throw in regenerators of any kind or larger numbers on both sides. Fighting against Advent's shield regenerators, focus fire will wipe out your entire fleet while you do zip. Not a single point of actual damage.
Reply #44 from Sins Forums Top
If you're dealing so little damage that the extremely slow decay even has an effect, natural regeneration is going to overcome the puny excuse for damage you're doing anyway.
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That doesn't make sense; .0125 /s is non-trivial decay, 1.25% a second. In the exercises this thread was running earlier, we were hypothesizing 12.5 DPS as the break-even point: if you're doing more than 12.5 DPS to a ship, you're pushing its shield mitigation up.

Most frigates (except LRM and flak), most cruisers (save Heavy, obviously), and all fighter squadrons do less than 12.5 DPS. So, if they engage each other one on one, neither vessel should be drifting above 15% shield mitigation.

I got my info from here:
https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/?forumid=404&aid=177682

I actually ran a test of this. 8v8, L1 Kols, no fighters, Team A engaging one-on-one, B engaging by focus fire. Result: 8-0 for focus fire, although team B almost lost a ship.
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Umm. 8 L1 Kols? Those are capships, they do a lot more than 12.5 DPS. I don't think they have a prayer of not maxing out shield mitigation on anything they shoot at. :)

Anyway, I appreciate that you're trying to test these theories in practice, rather than on paper, so I'll find an opportunity to confirm that two solitary Light Cobalt frigates will kill each other perfectly well, while both staying near 15% shield mitigation.

At the moment, I agree with Alacer's evidence that spread fire is good when dealing with small numbers of units, but more than a half-dozen units and it's time for focus-firing.
Reply #45 from Sins Forums Top
Heavier units also get a huge advantage by focusing fire, in 6 kodiaks vs 6 kodiaks, the focusing fire group doesn't even lose a single ship, and ends the fight with more than 50% of its total hit points remaining. I'm just going to continue using focus fire as a general rule, espesically since I have never managed to get my units to spread evenly, they always cluster no matter what I try.

Oh, and Alacer: You're awesome.
Reply #46 from Sins Forums Top
Alacer is a fucking genious. That said, it appears that outside of skirmishes in the first few moments of the game (I like that "first few moments" in this game includes the breadth of several games of traditional RTS's) vs. pirates or scouting fleets (say on a small 1v1 map), focus firing will win. That said, if a small scouting party of yours encounters an enemy fleet early on (say your capship and 4ish Cobalt equivalents), then you should spread. Not useful knowledge on a large scale, but sometimes the small fights are the most important...
Reply #47 from Sins Forums Top
Are you sure that HP regeneration continues at the maximum rate while a ship is in combat?

Also, wouldn't the best tactic be to spread fire with all your ships at first, then focus fire with some of them to pick off the now damaged enemy ships, so that their mitigation only has a chance to increase moderately before they are destroyed?
Reply #48 from Sins Forums Top
Using those numbers I find the focus fire group to win, even though this test is biased towards the spread fire a fair amount.Durikkan, I think you're right. I adjusted my spreadsheet to assume that each ship heals 2.75 HPs a second (is that what you meant by 2.75 of hull regen?) when actively attacked; this adds about a dozen seconds to the life of the ship being focus-fired, which in turn gives the entire SG fleet more time doing damage. Even so, when every FG ship is healing 2.75 HPs a second, they benefit from health regen a lot more than the SG ships do.. . . the end result is that all four SG ships die, leaving the FG ships at 1/4 health.
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Yes, important question is - does shield and subsequently shield+hull regen will roughly 'beat' over time mitigation. Currently, attacked ship from SG will live much shorter, than any of FG ships, and it will benefit much less from that regen. If you take i.e. bare Kodiak, it's effective regens are 2 for shield and 1.88 for hull (and if you throw some basic tech researchs, more). Considering length of the fights, it's hell a lot more to chew through for SG.

Are you sure that HP regeneration continues at the maximum rate while a ship is in combat?
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Hull regen is halved while in combat (InCombatHullRegenerationPenalty). Or treated in a wicked way SoaSE treats percent modifiers < 0 - in such case it would be 1/3 of the nominal value.

I guess it's time to recheck this stuff (in theory) with all factors.
Reply #49 from Sins Forums Top
Well, If you have the repair units around, that gives you a regen of 20 to 40 points a second, and I think most fleets would probably have them after a certain point (I haven't really built them much, but I haven't really played against people and the AI generally lets me fight on top of my repair depots.

Even with no health regen, 4 focusing kodiaks still wipe the floor with 4 spread kodiaks (not a single loss)

Every single upgrade both sides get also tips the scales in the favor of the focusing side, with the advent shield mitigation upgrades as a possible exception.
Reply #50 from Sins Forums Top
As a bit of a side issue, am I right in thinking that the way shield mitigation works favours slow firing, heavy hit weapons over faster firing lighter weapons? Assuming dps is over 12.5 anyway. My thinking is that while the average mitigation will be the same for weapons of equal dps, if you actually drew a graph of shield mitigation against time, you'd get a saw edge, with mitigation jumping up when a weapon is fired then linearily declining until the next shots hits. With a slower firing weapon peaks would be higher and the troughs would be lower, but since the weapon hits at the bottom of the trough this is the only important value.

I think this argument makes sense but really need to go through some numbers to check it.